The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

“The Bear is a liar,” said Vasya.

Just then Sergei’s thready voice whispered behind her, “Fear and flee, unclean and accursed spirit, visible through deceit, hidden by pretense. Whether you be of the morning, noonday, midnight, or night, I expel you.”

Midday cried out, this time in real pain; she dropped her shears, fell back, vanishing, vanishing…

“No!” Vasya cried to the monks. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what they think.” She lunged and seized Midday’s wrist, keeping her from disappearing utterly.

“I see you,” she said to her, low. “Live on.”

Midday stood an instant, wounded, afraid, wondering. Then she was swept up in a whirlwind and vanished.

Morozko stepped out of the noonday glare. “Didn’t your nurse warn you about wheat-fields in summer?” he asked.

“Father!” Sasha cried, just as Vasya turned back to the monks. Sergei was breathing too fast; his pulse vibrated in his throat. Morozko might have hesitated, but, muttering something, he knelt in the dust, laid long fingers against the frantic pulse in the monk’s neck. As he did, he breathed out, his other fist clenched hard.

“What are you doing?” Sasha demanded.

“Wait,” said Vasya.

The wind rose. Sluggishly at first, then faster, flattening the wheat. It was a cold wind: a wind of winter, pine-smelling, impossible in all the heat and the dust.

Morozko’s jaw was set; his outline grew fainter even as the wind grew stronger. In a moment he would disappear, his presence as unimaginable as a snowflake at high summer. Vasya caught him by the shoulders. “Not yet,” she said into his ear.

He shot her a brief look and hung on.

As the air cooled, Sergei’s breathing and rabbit-fast pulse began to slow. Sasha and Rodion looked better too. Vasya was drinking in the cold air with great gulps. But Morozko’s outline was wavering badly now, despite her grip.

Unexpectedly, Sasha asked, “What can I do?” Hope had won out over the censure on his face.

She glanced at him in surprise, and said, “See him. And remember.” Morozko’s lips thinned, but he said nothing.

Sergei drew a deep breath. The air about them was cool enough to dry the sweat beneath Vasya’s stifling shirt. The wind faded to a breeze. The sun had moved; the heat was still intense, but not deadly. Morozko dropped his hand, bowed forward, gray as spring snow. Vasya kept her hands on his shoulders. Cold water ran down her fingers, over his shoulders.

All were silent.

“I don’t think we’re going any farther for a while,” Vasya said, looking from the frost-demon to the sweat-stained monks. “No point in doing the Bear’s work for him, and perishing before we get there.”

No one said anything to that.

* * *

THEY FOUND A LITTLE HOLLOW of the river, cool with grass and moving water. The river rolled brown at their feet, running fast toward Moscow, where the Moskva and the Neglinnaya joined. In the distance, thick with haze, they could see the sullen city itself. A little way beyond them, the river was full of boats.

It was too hot to eat, but Vasya took a little bread from her brother and sprinkled crumbs in the water. She thought she caught a flash of bulging fish-eyes, a ripple that was not part of the current, but that was all.

Sasha, watching her, said abruptly, “Mother—Mother put bread in the water too, sometimes. For the river-king, she said.” Then he shut his lips tight. But to Vasya it sounded like understanding, it sounded like apology. She smiled tentatively at him.

“The demon meant to kill us,” said Sergei, his voice still hoarse.

“She was afraid,” said Vasya. “They are all afraid. They do not want to disappear. I think the Bear is making them more afraid, and so they lash out. It wasn’t her fault. Father, exorcisms will only drive more of them to the Bear’s side.”

“Perhaps,” said Sergei. “But I did not wish to die in a wheat-field.”

“You didn’t,” said Vasya. “Because the winter-king saved your life.”

No one said anything.

She left them in the shade, rose and went downstream, out of earshot. She sank down in the tall grasses, dabbled her feet in the water and said aloud, “Are you all right?”

Silence. Then his voice spoke in the summertime stillness. “I have been better.”

He stepped soundlessly through the grass and sank to the earth beside her. It was somehow harder to look at him now, as the eye slides, without comprehension, over any impossible thing. She narrowed her eyes and kept looking until the feeling passed. He sat with his knees drawn up, staring out at the glaring-bright water. Sourly he said, “Why should my brother fear my freedom? I am less than a ghost.”

“Does he know now?”

“Yes,” said Morozko. “How could he not? Calling the winter wind, so…I could not have made clearer sign of my presence short of shouting it to his face. If we still mean to go to Moscow, we will have to go today, despite the risk of sunset. I had hoped to avoid night and the upyry both, but if he is going to send his servants to try to kill you anyway, better we have the bridle first.”

Vasya shivered in the midday sun. Then she told him, “There is a reason chyerti like Lady Midday are on the Bear’s side.”

“Many perhaps. Not most,” Morozko returned. “Chyerti don’t want to disappear, but most of us know what folly it is, to go to war with men. Our fates are bound together.”

She said nothing.

“Vasya, how close did my brother come to persuading you to join him?”

“He didn’t come close,” she said. Morozko raised a brow. Lower, she added, “I thought about it. He asked me what loyalty I could have to Rus’. The mob of Moscow killed my horse.”

“You freed Pozhar, who set fire to Moscow,” Morozko said. He was looking out at the water again. “You caused the death of your sister’s infant, though she was ready to die to give the babe life. Perhaps you only paid for your foolishness.”

His tone was wounding, the words sword-sharp in their suddenness. Startled, she said, “I did not mean—”

“You came into the city like a bird in a cage of reeds, battering yourself against the bars and breaking them—do you wonder that it ended as it did?”

“Where should I have gone?” she snapped. “Home, to be burned as a witch? Should I have heeded you, worn your charm, married, had children, and sat sometimes by the window, fondly remembering my days with the winter-king? Should I have let—”